Bad Dads Film Review

This episode begins, as ever, in total disarray: missed jokes, football updates, wine anxiety, and the creeping realisation that the best material always happens before the mic is on. Then Dan drops a bombshell: The Night Manager is so tense he physically struggled to finish it.And that’s the hook.Based on John le Carré’s novel, The Night Manager is a six-part espionage thriller starring Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a hotel night manager pulled into a covert operation to bring down international arms dealer Richard Roper (a towering Hugh Laurie). Set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, it’s a story of guilt, infiltration, and moral compromise — where every smile hides a weapon and every ally might be a leak.We talk about:Why this is one of the most gripping British series of the last decadeHiddleston’s transformation into a Bond-adjacent undercover operativeHugh Laurie’s chilling reinvention as “the worst man in the world”The mechanics of building a fake identity and earning trust from monstersOlivia Colman’s ferocious MI6 handler and the cost of doing “good”The unbearable tension of near-misses, close calls, and cliffhangersJohn le Carré’s MI6 roots and why his work still defines spy fictionIt’s sleek, paranoid, adult television — the kind where you pause episodes just to steady your nerves. With a new season finally arriving, this is the perfect moment to (re)discover it.If you like espionage with teeth, villains who smile while they ruin lives, and stories where nobody is truly safe, this episode is your invitation to dive in.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This episode begins the only way we know how: absolute chaos. We veer from wills, tits, and Stranger Things before eventually remembering we’re meant to be talking about a film. If you’re new here, that’s the show.The film in question is Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare — a swaggering WWII caper based on a real black-ops unit hand-picked by Churchill and Ian Fleming. Set in 1941, it imagines the birth of modern special forces: not rules, not honour, just twenty feral specialists sent in to break things and terrify the enemy.We talk about:The shift from “civilised” warfare to winning at any costHenry Cavill as a proto–James Bond, recruited straight out of prisonThe opening “Swedish fishermen” massacre as a mission statementCartoon-level violence, moustaches, one-liners and Guy Ritchie excessThe joy of watching war movies ditch decorum for chaosWhy SAS: Rogue Heroes makes the perfect companion pieceIt’s not subtle. It’s not serious. It’s loud, slick, and gleefully ridiculous — a war movie powered by bravado and bad behaviour.If you like explosions, rule-breaking, and men with absolutely no fear of death, this episode (and this film) are for you.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Benoit Blanc is back — but not in the way you might expect.In this episode, we dig into Wake Up Dead Man, the third entry in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, and quickly realise this isn’t just another playful, sun-drenched whodunnit. The tone is darker, stranger, and far more morbid than Knives Out or Glass Onion, leaning hard into religious imagery, guilt, confession, and moral rot.Set around a remote church and a fire-and-brimstone priest, the film opens with what looks like an impossible murder: a man stabbed in a sealed room, in full view of his congregation. From there, Blanc circles a tight group of suspects — each with motive, history, and secrets — as the film toys with classic murder-mystery rules… and then quietly breaks a few of them.What we talk about in the episode:The tonal shift — why this feels closer to gothic noir than cosy Agatha ChristieReligion, confession, and judgment as thematic engines, not just window dressingWhether the mystery is too Scooby-Doo or intentionally rejecting “fair-play” sleuthingA stacked cast and who actually makes an impact (and who doesn’t)Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc: more observer than solver this time — for better or worseThe film’s final act, revelations, and why it left us oddly unsatisfied despite clever ideasHow it stacks up against Knives Out (still the gold standard) and Glass Onion (the loudest sibling)We also get into a broader debate about modern murder mysteries, Netflix’s influence on structure and pacing, and whether this series is drifting away from the thing that made it work in the first place: watching a brilliant detective actually do the detecting.If you like your whodunnits bleak, talky, and a little unholy — or if you just want to hear us wrestle with a film that’s clever, flawed, and deliberately frustrating — this one’s for you.🎧 Listen to the full episode for the deep dive, the disagreements, and our verdict on whether Wake Up Dead Man is a bold evolution… or a mystery that forgets to be fun.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Die Hard is the kind of “comfort violence” film that never gets old!It’s a Christmas film for structural reasons, not vibes. Christmas isn’t just background dressing. The party only happens because it’s Christmas, the building is half-staffed because it’s Christmas, McClane is only in LA because it’s Christmas, and Hans’ whole timing depends on a holiday lull. Remove Christmas and the plot collapses.McClane isn’t an action hero at the start — he becomes one. He’s scared, he bleeds, he’s improvising, and he’s basically running on stubbornness and spite. That’s why it’s satisfying: it’s competence earned under pressure, not superhero nonsense.Hans Gruber is the real blueprint villain. He’s calm, intelligent, funny, and actually seems like he has a plan. Rickman makes him feel like he’s doing theatre while everyone else is doing an action film. It’s why the film still plays now.Ellis is the most realistic character in the whole thing. Not “realistic” as in good, but realistic as in: give a coke-sniffing corporate gobshite a crisis and he’ll try to negotiate his way into being important. Then immediately get shot.The Powell/McClane friendship is pure genius. They barely share a scene, but it lands emotionally because it’s built on voice, trust, and the fact Powell is the only person treating McClane like a human being instead of a “situation.”And yes: a 24/7 Die Hard channel is basically the final form of Christmas television. Even if you don’t watch it, it’s reassuring that it exists, like a lighthouse for divorced dads and men in dressing gowns.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Homoeroticism, honour codes, and the least festive “Merry Christmas” ever recorded.This week’s pick looks like a seasonal warm hug by title alone, but it’s actually a POW-camp psychodrama where Christmas is basically just another opportunity for humiliation, beatings, and cultural misunderstanding.The core triangleLawrence (Tom Conti): the cultural bridge. He respects Japan’s traditions more than the other prisoners do, but still can’t square the camp’s brutality with the language of “honour.”Celliers (David Bowie): quiet defiance, charisma, scars, and a refusal to surrender mentally even when physically broken.Yonoi (Ryūichi Sakamoto): the commander whose obsession with honour is also clearly entangled with fascination/desire — especially towards Celliers — and whose self-loathing (the “missed coup / lost honour” backstory) bleeds into how he runs the camp.What the film is really doingThis isn’t a “war movie” in the guns-and-heroics sense. It’s a study of shame and power:The Japanese guards are trapped by their own code: surrender is incomprehensible, confession is weakness, punishment is “order.”The prisoners are trapped by their code: resistance is identity, humiliation is poison, compromise looks like collaboration.And between them is Lawrence, trying to keep men alive with language — while knowing language isn’t enough.The flashback that explains everythingCelliers’ confession about failing to protect his younger brother (and the brutal boarding-school initiation) is where the film stops being “about the camp” and becomes “about the kind of violence men normalise.” That shame mirrors Yonoi’s shame. Different cultures, same wound.The moments you won’t forgetThe mock execution: Bowie refusing the blindfold because it’s “for them.”The Christmas scene: Hara drunk on sake, Lawrence spared, and the phrase that becomes the film’s ghost.The public kiss: Celliers’ desperate, weaponised tenderness to stop an execution — the emotional bomb that breaks Yonoi.The ending, years later: Lawrence visiting Hara, now the condemned man, and the final line delivered with a tragic calm:“Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.”VerdictNot festive. Not cosy. Not easy. But brilliantly acted, quietly devastating, and still unusually forward-thinking in how it frames desire, masculinity, and shame without turning it into cheap scandal.If you want tinsel: watch Elf. If you want a Christmas film that leaves a bruise: this is the one.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads